Gilded Lily

by Delphine Dryden

  Armintrout gave the lever a practiced jerk, raining sparks down on the coal and kindling until the wood caught fire. Within a few minutes, the water in the dog’s belly was heating nicely and it began its endless journey on the spit wheel.

  Scattered applause filtered into the shop from the crowd assembled outside the window. Small boys and layabouts, mostly, who’d strolled by and stayed to see the steam dog go back into action because they had no place else to be. Freddie spotted a few familiar faces as well, potentially useful faces. Armintrout’s shop was close enough to the docklands, and his clientele was rough enough, that he knew all sorts of people and facts. Getting him to discuss them was another matter, of course.

  “’Ow much, then?” he demanded when she straightened to admire the restored dog’s smooth action. “Mind you, I had to wait those two days more with no word.”

  “I came back,” Freddie reminded him. She slotted her equipment neatly back into her broad tool belt. “It’s working now, better than ever. Drawing a pretty crowd too.”

  “Aye. I suppose. What cost to me, though?”

  Deflecting his enquiry, she scanned the faces beyond the window. The onlookers were beginning to disperse, only a few of the younger boys remaining with their faces pressed to the glass to watch the spectacle and slaver over the slowly roasting haunch on the spit. “You strike me as a man of knowledge and discretion, Mr. Armintrout.”

  The butcher wiped his hands on his bloody apron, cocking his head at her. “I might be.”

  “For the right price?”

  Armintrout glanced from Freddie to Barnabas, then out the window. “Not here.” He stalked off to the shop’s back door, jerking his head for her to follow. “And not him. Just you.”

  “No problem at all. Barney will just tidy up while we talk. Won’t you, Barney?”

  She smirked at Smith-Grenville’s glare and followed the portly butcher into the back room of the shop, where the floor was stained red and the stench greeted her like a malevolent entity. “I need something other than meat, as you may have surmised.” She might well never eat meat again, in fact, after encountering it in this state. In the shop’s front half, neatly trussed clean carcasses hung in tidy rows for display. Here, where the meat was not yet dressed, the less palatable part of the business was all too clearly visible.

  “Surmised?” The big man lifted his eyebrows. “’Ow you do talk, Fred. Should I surmise you want a good or a service?”

  The partially butchered carcass of a pig occupied a bloodstained table in the center of the room, an invitation to flies from miles around. The smell turned Fred’s stomach, and she regretted letting Armintrout dictate the location of their discussion. Too late to turn away now, though. The butcher had been in trade here for nearly forty years, and if anyone was selling anything near the docks he knew about it.

  “A good. A very bad good, and it isn’t for me, I assure you.”

  “For a friend. I see.”

  “A friend of a friend. I don’t want to buy, I just want to know who’s selling.”

  “You still ’aven’t told me what.” Although they were alone in the room, he’d dropped his voice.

  Fred did him one better and mouthed the word so there would be no risk of eavesdropping. “Opium. Not in a den. The actual supplier.”

  “No,” he said too quickly. “No, I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Emblem of a golden poppy.”

  “I most definitely don’t know about him. You don’t want to either, Fred. Not if you value that neck o’ yours.” Armintrout moved to a workbench in one corner of the gory meat parlor and began sharpening a cleaver, working the grindstone’s pedal with his foot. Not as a threat, Freddie gathered, but simply for something to do because he was anxious. She’d struck a nerve.

  “I could disassemble the dog. Or worse yet, leave it like I found it.”

  “Aye, you could do that. Shop did well enough before it, it’ll do well enough without, I expect.”

  Armintrout’s apprentice, a boy half Freddie’s size and probably less than half her age, scurried into the room and stopped upon seeing his employer in deep discussion with the tinker. The butcher nodded toward a side of beef hanging on a hook, and the lad retrieved it and staggered away with it to leave them alone again. The meat had appeared to outweigh the apprentice, and Freddie had no idea how the youngster managed. But he was one of the lucky ones, she knew, with the prospect of gainful future employment and a roof over his head. How many fishmongers’ apprentices and children were starving on the street today because her father had inadvertently robbed them of their livelihood? How many might be killed if there was a terrible earthquake and the person who might have warned them failed to do so?

  “Or I could maintain the device free of charge for the rest of its useful life. That must be worth something.”

  He turned, lifted the cleaver and brought it down with a crack on a handy gobbet of what appeared to be organ meat, testing the edge. The blade sank into the scarred wood of the table, embedding bits of gore even deeper in the surface. “If you ain’t buying, why do you need to know?”

  “I told you. For a friend of a friend. Somebody who may be in trouble.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. If Phineas Smith-Grenville was involved with the illegal opium trade, whether as a spy or not, he was potentially in a great deal of trouble. And Lord Smith-Grenville might not be quite a friend, but explaining the actual relationship even to herself seemed impossible.

  Armintrout sighed over his knife and bits of meat, his wide shoulders slumping. “Free service on anything in the shop that breaks and you know how to fix.”

  “Fine. Give me something. A name, a location.”

  “I will. But know who you’re dealing with, Fred. My cousin Tom turned up missing a week or so ago. They found him in an opium den, strangled. His wife had gone looking for him and she never came back. Not all of her, at least. Neighbor heard some cats fighting in the ’ouse, had a look and found the lady’s head sitting on the kitchen table. No body. Just the head. Cats were having their supper.”

  Freddie suffered a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the gruesome setting. “How is that relevant to my question?”

  “Relevant. Another one o’ them words, Fred. With those words, and those questions, I wonder ’oo you are sometimes, I really do.”

  “I’m nobody.”

  “You sound too much like somebody. All right, my cousin, he called himself a fisherman. He worked on boats, but he weren’t no fisherman. Worked for this fellow Rollo Furneval.” He rattled off a street direction to one of the most distant and least savory docks outside London, far down the estuary, nearly to the channel itself. “It’s on a deep-water dock, fronts on the free zone where the big ships come through, so I sometimes go there to pick up specialty items. On ice from Europa, costs the earth, so I haven’t had cause to go lately ’cause nobody can afford to buy that stuff now. It’s always half empty down there these days. But I doubt anything’s changed much aside from that. You won’t miss the warehouses. All behind a fence, and the biggest has a giant yellow flower painted on the side, with extra gold leaf ’round the edges to make it stand out. But that place is guarded like the crown jewels were in it. Nobody gets in. Not even cargo ships. Only occasional steam cars.”

  “But it’s a warehouse,” Freddie protested. “There must be goods going back and forth.”

  Armintrout shrugged. “Said too much already. Get your nobody apprentice and go, Fred. I’ll get word to you through Dan Pinkerton the next time I need you. Don’t ask for me otherwise.”

  • • •

  BARNABAS HATED THE surroundings but found the risk entirely acceptable for the reward of getting to follow around Freddie Murcheson while she was wearing trousers. Although her tinker’s costume was designed to obscure her female figure, not flatter it, most of the obfuscation was accomplished by extra paddi
ng in the front, under the waistcoat. She hadn’t thought to mask the rear view. He knew he should be shocked at himself for looking in the first place, much less appreciating what he saw, but his character was evidently lacking.

  “You might want to look in the back and make sure I’ve put all the tools away properly,” he suggested quite shamelessly once Freddie had joined him on the seat of the idling pony trap. As he’d known she would, she twisted and leaned over the seat, giving him an excellent perspective on the curve of her hip and buttock as her jacket rode up.

  “It all looks fine,” she confirmed. “You’re a terrible apprentice, however.”

  “I’m too old to be an apprentice,” he reminded her. It had been his primary objection to the day’s cover story to begin with. It had allowed them to venture forth without waiting for Dan Pinkerton to be off duty, however, so he’d donned the costume and done his best. “And you’re no master. What did you learn from the butcher?”

  Barnabas had been all in favor of heading straight to an opium den and questioning whoever seemed in charge. He didn’t know much, but he knew that Murcheson had lied to him and he must now reevaluate all he had heard and discover the facts for himself. At the very least, if the part about the opium had been true in any way, he might be able to find out if Phineas had frequented any of the local dens. Or he might rule it out.

  Freddie had been the one to point out that they didn’t care about the opium dens or what happened along the chain of suppliers. Finding the operation that bore Orm’s logo was still the best lead to Phineas, as well as to the saboteurs. What they needed to learn was where a smuggling operation with cargos requiring large submersibles might be headquartered. And they didn’t want to tip their hand while finding this out.

  All that might be true, but Barnabas wasn’t sure he trusted the butcher any more than he trusted some random drug trafficker.

  “A name. Rollo Furneval. And a possible location.”

  “You sound dubious.” He didn’t think it seemed right, Freddie being the anxious one.

  Freddie eased the cart into motion. “It sounds as though the location might not help us much. Armintrout said it’s a warehouse but it doesn’t seem to be used as a staging area for cargo. Which makes one wonder what it is used for, but as we’re specifically looking for evidence to tie this man Furneval to either the illegal opium trade or the submersible sensor array or both, it doesn’t sound like the warehouse will help us much.”

  “Are you driving back into Belgravia? Dressed like this?”

  She chuckled. “Of course. We’re paying a visit to my friend Lady Sophronia in Wilton Crescent. She helps me get tidied up when I’ve someplace to be in the evenings and I’ve spent my days gathering grease.”

  “Lady Sophronia? Not Sophronia Wallingford?” The name flew out of his past with the force of a body blow from a cricket bat. He hadn’t heard it in three years.

  “Yes. You know her?”

  Did he know her? Not half as well as he’d once thought. Depending on whom one asked, Sophie Howard Wallingford was a martyr or a gold digger, a devoted wife or a heartless deceiver. And apparently a friend in need to Fred Merchant when he wanted to transform back into Frédérique Murcheson in time to appear properly groomed for the soiree her father was throwing that evening. Assuming, of course, that Rutherford Murcheson returned from his undersea journey in time to host his own party. As of that morning, he’d still been mysteriously absent from the house.

  “Phineas knows her. Knew her. Before she married Wallingford.”

  His tone must have given something away, because she pursed her lips in obvious disapproval. Of him, of Sophie, of Phineas, he couldn’t be sure.

  “I see. Did Phineas have any money?”

  “Well, I suppose one must give Lady Sophie credit for being honest about her motivations, if her friend knows that’s the important question to ask. No, of course he hadn’t any money. Not to speak of. Nothing like Wallingford has, naturally.”

  She shot a frown his way. “Nothing like Wallingford had, you mean.”

  Barnabas wanted to crow a bit, but something in Freddie’s eyes stayed him. “He lost his money? A tragedy, to be sure.”

  “Lost it? I suppose you could say so. He left it all to Sophie. Alas, he has no use for it where he is now.”

  “What, dead?”

  “Yes. Over a year ago, just after their second anniversary. The time’s flown. I asked whether Phineas had money because if he hadn’t, I wondered at his being allowed to know Sophie at all back then, if he was just a young naval officer with nothing much else to recommend him. Her parents controlled her every move until she married Wallingford, kept her locked up until it was time to parade her in front of eligible bachelors. Wallingford essentially bought her freedom for her. He was the only one who could meet their price. Their debts were quite heavy.”

  “I suppose that’s one perspective.” She’d let herself be bought, if Phineas had the right of it. Actively marketed herself to the highest bidder. “She never seemed particularly unhappy with her circumstances.”

  The glare Freddie leveled at him could have razed buildings. “Of course she didn’t seem so. What good would that have done her? I take it your brother was a would-be suitor. Consider that his view of things may have been skewed.”

  About that, Miss Murcheson was absolutely correct. Phineas hadn’t been a mere would-be suitor, he had been deeply in love with Lady Sophie Howard. Whatever the facts, Phineas had taken her rejection three years earlier all too much to heart. He’d turned to the oblivious solace of opium to forget and disappeared shortly thereafter. Or perhaps not; perhaps that was only what he’d let people think as part of his cover story. What Murcheson had told people so they’d be less likely to come looking for him. Barnabas didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  “Your parents have you on the marriage mart, at least ostensibly, and yet you seem to have managed a good deal of freedom.” He gestured at her costume, at the steam pony before them and the street beyond.

  “My parents don’t keep me locked up. Did you think I was speaking figuratively about Sophie? I wasn’t. There were literal locks involved. I was the one who taught her how to pick them.”

  “But how . . . that’s ridiculous. That’s something from a novel. Things like that don’t happen anymore.”

  Now her look wasn’t so much angry as disgusted, and far too weary for such a young woman. “If you believe that, you’re a fool, my lord. A fool who’s very lucky to have been born a man. And firstborn son to a peer, at that. You know nothing of how the world works for the rest of us. Just as I’ve no real idea how bad things are for these poor people my father seems bent on putting out of work. All I can do is imagine, and be grateful I don’t have to know firsthand.”

  He pondered that all the way into Belgravia, where the late-afternoon traffic dwindled to a polite minimum. He didn’t like the lingering, angry tightness around the corners of Miss Murcheson’s lush mouth. Nor did he care for the silence, which was all the louder because she was usually so voluble.

  The grooms at Wallingford House were clearly familiar with Freddie. Scarcely had she brought the trap to a halt before two strapping lads whisked it away into a stall, flinging an oilcloth over it. Another stood ready with a brush, to knock any tinkering-related debris from Freddie and Barnabas’s coats and shoes before they proceeded into the house proper. Brisk, efficient, respectful . . . and apparently paid to be blind and deaf about their lady’s unorthodox visitor.

  Freddie—it was growing difficult to think of her as Miss Murcheson, after calling her Fred all day—led the way up the back stairs to a broad corridor, and thence to a daintily appointed salon that appeared washed in every shade of pale green. It was as though they’d stepped into a fresh spring morning.

  Its only denizen, however, wore a somber gray afternoon dress and a frown.

  “Freddie
, darling, you’re late. I was beginning to worry. And who have you brought with you—oh.”

  “Lady Sophronia.” Barnabas bowed curtly, never taking his eyes off the woman. She hadn’t changed, other than the exchange of a girlish frock and curls for postmourning attire and a simple chignon. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  Upon her seeing an unexpected face, her visage had cleared into a smooth mask of beautiful affability, an illusion as practiced as any parlor trick. “Lord Smith-Grenville. I’ll assume you meant that ironically. Freddie, what is going on?”

  Freddie was still frowning, a state of affairs that Barnabas found he categorically disliked. He wanted her to be smiling always.

  “Lord Smith-Grenville came to London looking for his brother. Just now he told me that you knew Phineas Smith-Grenville as well. I believe there are misconceptions to be aired between you.”

  Sophie Wallingford would be an excellent poker player, Barnabas decided, if she ever chose to do such a thing. Far better than he. Her expression never altered, her clear brown eyes and heart-shaped face remained as gently welcoming as anyone might wish for. “We’re cutting things a bit fine, so we’ll have to air them succinctly. But all right, if you must.”

  He didn’t know that he must do anything. “Another time, perhaps?”

  “Now will suffice. No time like the present, my lord. Freddie, do hurry up to my rooms. Angelica is preparing a bath for you. And none too soon, I might add. You’re even a bit more pungent than usual.”

  “We were at a butcher’s. I’ll go up. Lord Smith-Grenville, I’ll speak with you this evening. I have an idea.”

  “Oh, dear,” he blurted before he could stop himself.

  She smiled, a flash of sunlight on an inexplicably dark day. No matter what, it was better than the frown. “Don’t worry. We won’t even need to leave my house to implement it.”

  Biting back another Oh, dear, Barnabas nodded and watched her out the door before turning to Sophie. The agent, perhaps, of his brother’s destruction.